


Your Turn Forever

by tuppenny



Series: Scars [5]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: (duh), F/M, Implied Sexual Content, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuppenny/pseuds/tuppenny
Summary: Jack and Kath get married.(Again, this spoils the first story in the series, and it'll be better if you read the first story in the series first, but hey, do what you want!)





	Your Turn Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carbon65](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/gifts).



> From Pigeon: "I’d love to see the wedding. Who is the wedding party? What disasters can Jack and Kath make happen? Who is Emma’s plus one? So many questions!"

“I’m so nervous, Jack,” Katherine said, wrapping her arms and legs around him and burying her head in his neck.

“Why?”

“Because my father is going to pitch a fit about it.”

“Well if he’d just gone along with things, he’d’ve been invited,” Jack said, squeezing her reassuringly and nuzzling into her hair so as to breathe in the Katherine smell he loved so much. Just think, after this afternoon, he’d get to wake up every morning to her in his bed— _their_  bed. It was almost too much. “As long as you ain’t worried about marryin’ me, I’m okay with whatever nerves ya wanna have.”

“As if I could ever be worried about marrying you,” she purred, somehow finding a way to fit herself even tighter against him. “You should’ve asked me years ago.”

He growled, feeling a heat building low in his abdomen at her soft touch and her golden words. “Lemme fuck ya.”

She laughed and kissed his bare chest. “Shouldn’t we save that for tonight?”

Jack shivered and began plucking at her negligee. “I prefer ta think of it as a warm-up. A practice run.”

“Is that what we’ve been doing up to now? Practice runs?”

“Takes time ta get good; I want t’night ta be good. We oughta practice some more, you’n me; make sure we’s ready f’r this.”

Katherine snorted. “Uh huh. That’s what every girl wants to hear on her wedding day, Jackie. You’re a real romantic.”

Jack fidgeted. If they weren’t going to do this, then she was pressed too tightly against him. He needed to sort this out as quickly as possible. “Is that a no?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, pulling back to tongue gently at the sensitive spot behind his ears.

“Ohhhhh, Kitty,” he said, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Fuck.”

“Let’s.”

*  
Katherine was sitting in Jack’s lap at the courthouse a few hours later, her white Vera Wang dress draping over his dress pants and cascading onto the floor.

“Get a room, you two,” Emmy said, throwing a gum wrapper at them.

“We already did,” Jack said, grinning toothily. “Four Seasons. Whole weekend.”

“How on earth didja swing that?” Charlie asked, adjusting his tie.

“Our dad’s rich, remember?” Connie said, idly bouncing her legs. “When’s this justice of the peace going to be free, anyway? Wasn’t your appointment fifteen minutes ago?”

“Ain’t no rush,” Jack said, shrugging. “I’m with my girlie already anyway; ‘s just a piece of paper.”

“You don’t really think that,” Katherine scolded him, dragging a finger across his lower lip and down his chin.

“No,” he said, sighing, “But I’d get mad at this judge otherwise, an’ I don’t wanna be mad durin’ our weddin’.”

“Our wedding,” Katherine said in wonderment, before grinning and kissing him. “We’re getting married.”

“Please tell me you knew that before you showed up here,” Edie grumbled.

“Naw, she just put this dress on for fun,” Jack shot back. Katherine giggled, Edie sighed, and Emmy tossed another gum wrapper at him.

“How many of those ya got in your pocket, Em?” Albert asked, running his fingers through his bright red hair.

She scrunched her nose in thought. “A lot? Figured I better make use of the pockets, ya know?”

Katherine laughed. “Any tissues in there in case you start crying, or just gum wrappers?”

“Mostly gum,” Emmy grinned. “I like to leave the crying to Jackdaw.”

Davey laughed, earning a wink from Emmy.

“Hey, Emmybird,” Jack said, “Where’s ya plus one? Ya put one on the card.”

Emmy blushed and stammered for an answer, but just then the clerk poked her head into the waiting room. “Sorry about the wait. The room is all yours now.”

Jack hefted Katherine into his arms and carried her into the courtroom, her dress riding up slightly to show the blue garter on her thigh. “Ready, babe?” He whispered, looking her straight in the eyes.

She nodded. “There’s nothing in the world I want more than I want you, Jackie.”

He grinned and set her down, and the justice of the peace cleared her throat, prompting the couple to walk to the front of the room. “Are you ready?”

Jack and Katherine nodded as their friends arranged themselves on either side of the room. Really, anyone could’ve sat anywhere; Jack and Katherine had been together for so long at this point that anyone who didn’t get along with both of them didn’t get along with either of them. Still, traditions are hard to abandon, and so Emmy, Charlie, Davey, Albert, and Race sat on Jack’s side of the room, while Connie, Edie, Katherine’s brother Joey, Nina, and Keiko sat on Katherine’s.

The judge shuffled through some papers and said, “Alright, then let’s begin. Weddings are joyful occasions, but they are serious, too. They represent a serious commitment made between two people to share both the highs and lows of life, and all of you gathered here are making an equally serious commitment to support your friends through this journey they are embarking on today. Marriage is a serious endeavor, but it is joyful, too. Even the dull, difficult moments of your lives will be colored by the sweetness of knowing that you have a loving spouse to come home to at the end of the day, someone to lessen the sorrows and share the triumphs. May the joy that you experience today inform the way you see and live your marriage from here on out; may your happiness be sustained, may your passion expand into loyalty, may your vows be imbued with persistence.” The judge took a breath and adjusted her eyeglasses. “You wrote your own vows, correct?”

“Yes,” Katherine said, her eyes fixed on Jack. “I’m going first.” Jack nodded, biting his lip as Katherine let go of his hands to take a piece of neatly folded, lilac-colored paper from Edie, who was also temporarily in charge of holding Katherine’s buttercup bouquet. “Jack,” she said, clearing her throat. “It was not love at first sight for us. Getting to here, building what we have now—it was hard. It was messy and painful and bloody, and there were moments when I was sure I’d ruined everything between us. But you were always there. You were calm and kind and patient. You loved me when I couldn’t love myself. You loved the jagged shards of my heart back together, you loved my sharp tongue into softness, you loved my racing mind until it quieted enough to realize that you were what I’d wanted all along.”

Jack reached for her hand, and she clasped it, feeling his fingers trembling even more than hers. “I never felt like I was enough for you, Jack; I always knew that you deserved so much more than me. So much more than what I could give. But you loved me anyway, no matter what, and that made me think that maybe I could be what you thought I already was.”

She looked up from her paper and smiled, her eyes misty. “And even though I don’t know if I’m there yet, I do know that I will spend the rest of my life striving to be that woman. Because I love you. I love you so much it makes me dizzy. And I think what I love most about you is that even when I fail, I know that you will love me anyway. You’ve shown me that time and time again, and I… It took me a while, but I trust you, Jack, and I… I trust your love, too. Forever. I adore you beyond words, my darling, and I can’t imagine life without you. I’ll be yours for as long as you want me, no matter what. I swear it.”

She beamed, and it took every inch of self-restraint for Jack not to fling himself into her arms and kiss her right then. Instead, though, he cleared his throat and pulled his own paper out of the breast pocket of his suit. “Katherine,” he said, and then he paused to lick his lips, cough, and restart. “Katherine. I wish I could paint these vows instead of writin’ them, ‘cause I ain’t never been good with words. But you understand me even when I don’t speak. You look at me an’ somehow you  _know._  I hold your hand an’ kiss your lips an’ nudge your shoulder an’ you hear me loud an’ clear. You hear the words I ain’t able to find. You know me before I know myself, sometimes, an’ I don’t know how ya do it, but when I’m with you it’s like… it’s like I’m livin’ in the world I always wanted and never thought was real.”

He paused, and Katherine squeezed his hand. “I never thought I’d fall in love with a girl like you, much less that a girl like you could ever love a guy like me, but… well, by some miracle it happened.” He laughed briefly and continued. “I thank God ev’ry day f’r Race’s dumb skateboard an’ your perfect ass, ‘cause without ‘em I’d never have met the woman who helped me grow from a sullen, scared little boy to a man who’s able ta say alla this in front of witnesses an’ promises ta love an’ cherish you ‘til he’s dead an’ gone. ‘Cause death is the only thing that’s ever gonna keep me away from you, Katherine. I love you too damn much ta let anythin’ else get in the way of me an’ you, an’ I…” He swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling, trying to will his tears into receding. “I fuckin’ love ya, baby, an’ I’m gonna spend the rest of my life makin’ sure you knows it.”

To her credit, the justice of the peace kept a straight face through this rather unconventional speech, and then she wrapped things up with the legalese that made all of this a binding civil ceremony. “You may kiss the bride,” she added with a smile, and Jack let out a whoop before pulling Katherine to him and kissing her passionately. Their friends cheered and smiled; Edie cried, Nina clapped, Race whistled with his fingers, and Emmy pulled flower petals out of her other dress pocket and tossed them at the happy couple.

They flooded triumphantly out onto the steps of the courthouse, where Race and Albert promptly began throwing birdseed all over everyone. 

“On to Jacobi’s!” Jack yelled, spitting birdseed out of his mouth, and Katherine cheered along with everyone else, brandishing her buttercup bouquet in her left hand, which, just for today, was completely bare aside from her wedding ring. Just for today, she’d decided she didn’t want anything on her left wrist, and she’d stuck to it; there were no long sleeves, no watch, and no bracelets covering up the pain that Jack had loved her through and helped her handle.

The restaurant wasn’t far away, so they walked –well, skipped and scampered and twirled and hopped, mostly– the few blocks there before Race, Albert, and Joey burst through the doors, hollering, “Make way for Mr. and Mrs. John F. Kelly!”

“Or Mrs. and Mr. Katherine E. Pulitzer,” Emmy chirped, and Davey’s responding smile earned him another wink from her.

Jacobi smiled at the rowdy wedding party and ushered them into the back room, which they’d reserved an unnecessary four months in advance. They could have called as late as this morning to book the space, to be honest, but Jacobi was flattered by their foresight.

“The first three rounds are on us,” Katherine called, waving to additional friends who’d begun arriving for the party and reception.

“Hot dog!” Said Albert, jumping on Race’s back. “Best weddin’ ever!”

“Ya ain’t never been to a weddin’ before, idiot,” Race said, reaching over his shoulder to try and shove a hand in Albert’s face.

“Yeah, well, I’m still sure this one’s the best,” Albert said, kicking Race to make him go find a waiter and order some beer. “Hurry up, Racer, I wanna try some o’ that IPA Jackie was tellin’ me about.”

“Dirty hipster,” Race grumped, rolling his eyes, but he complied.

The party was in full swing, with Katherine dancing first with one of Jack’s friends, then the next, before circling around back to him for kisses and hugs and words that made her blush and grin. She was doing a passable Charleston with Romeo when Jack plopped down into the open chair next to Emmy. “ ‘Scuse me, Dave,” he said, interrupting the conversation his sister was having with his friend, “But c’n I steal Emmy f’r a second?”

“Sure thing, Jackie,” Davey said, pushing his own chair back. “I’ll go fill my drink.”

“Lemonade,” Jack laughed, watching Davey walk away. “He ain’t changed a lick since college, I swear. ‘Course he was already mature an’ smart an’ responsible back then, so I guess ain’t much needed ta be changed.”

Emmy grinned. “Unlike some other people we know, huh?”

Jack cuffed her lightly on the shoulder. “Hey now, I’m your elder, ya gotta respect me an’ shit.”

“Especially now that you’re a married man,” she said, her eyes dancing.

“ ‘Zactly,” Jack said sagely. “Two hours of marriage have made me a sage. In fact, I’s ‘bout ta be tapped ta be the next Dalai Lama.”

“Congratulations,” Emmy said, shaking his hand. “What an honor.”

“You bet,” said Jack, reaching to ruffle her hair and stopping short as he realized he was about to ruin her expensive wedding hairdo. “Whoops.” She giggled and he hugged her, rocking her side to side before pulling back. “I’m so glad you could be here t’day, lovey,” he said softly. “Means more’n I can say.”

“I’m so glad I could be here, too,” she said, laying a small hand atop his. “I’m so glad I have you back, Jackdaw. I just… I love you so much,” she said, her voice a little thick. “Katherine, too. You’re the siblings I always wanted, and I…” Her eyes darted away before settling back on his face. “You’re my hero, Jackdaw. I hope you know that.”

Jack just hugged her again, letting go only when Davey returned with his next glass of lemonade. Jack wiped at his eyes and smiled up at Davey before putting on a tone of mock disapproval and joking, “Not that I don’t love ya, Dave, but ain’t that seat s’posed ta be f’r Emmy’s plus one?”

Emmy flushed bright pink again, and Davey blanched. “Um…” he stammered. “I…”

Jack’s eyes narrowed, and Emmy squeaked, “He’s in the right seat, Jackdaw.”

“He  _what?”_  Jack burst out, his eyes bugging. “Are you—wait, is this—I mean—”

“He’s my plus one,” Emmy said, reaching for Davey’s hand.

“David?” Jack growled, demanding an explanation.

“I’m her plus one,” Davey confirmed, refusing to waver. “I’m her date.”

“I made him keep it quiet,” Emmy hastened to add, seeing the conflicting emotions warring on Jack’s face. “He wanted to tell you straight away, but I said no, I didn’t want you mixing in before we’d had time to see where things went, and you were distracted by the wedding anyway, so… Well, I figured it could wait. It was my call.”

“Wait a second, then—how long has this been going on?” Jack asked, his narrowed eyes flicking from Emmy to Davey and back.

“Six months,” Davey said firmly. “And it’s going really well, too.”

Emmy nodded, blushing and squeezing his hand tightly. “We like each other a lot,” she said, her voice still a little higher than normal. “He’s kind and caring and smart and funny.”

“He better be,” Jack growled, staring daggers at Davey. “ ‘Cause if he hurts ya, I’ll kill him. I don’t care how long we been friends, Dave, I don’t care what history we have t’gether—you hurt my sister, I am comin’ for ya.”

“I know,” Davey said, cool as a cucumber. “And there is no reason for you to worry. None.”

“Really,” Emmy pitched in. “I promise.”

Jack took a deep breath and sighed, analyzing the tone and body language of both Emmy and Davey. “Okay,” he said eventually. “You two be good to each other, then, okay? ‘Cause I love ya both.”

Emmy relaxed and dropped Davey’s hand to give her brother another big hug. “I’m so glad you approve,” she said. “He’s wonderful.”

“I know,” Jack said grudgingly, reluctantly releasing his sister and letting her return to her chair and lean her head on Davey’s shoulder. “He just better stay that way, is all.”

“I will,” Davey said, a smile tugging at his lips. “Thanks, Jack. Go find your bride.”

“My bride,” Jack breathed, remembering where he was. He whirled around to find Katherine in the middle of a foxtrot with Race, whose curls were bouncing along with the music. “We’re married,” he said, grinning back at Davey and Emmy. “I’m a  _husband.”_ He bolted out of his chair, and this time he did indeed slip up and ruffle Emmy’s fancy hair. “Watch me dance with my  _wife,_ kiddos,” he said, beaming, and he bounded away to snatch Katherine right out of Race’s arms. “My turn,” he said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Yes, please,” Katherine said, resting one hand on his shoulder as he slipped his hand to her waist for a waltz. “Your turn forever and always, buttercup.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said, missing a step so that he could focus on kissing her. “Forever and always.”

“Me, too,” Katherine said, stopping them in the middle of the dance floor so she could kiss him back. “I’m so happy, Jackie,” she said, pulling her lips away from his. “You make me so happy. I… I’m  _loved.”_

“Kitty,” he whispered. “You’re… you’re my angel. Don’t ever leave me.”

“I won’t,” she said, leaning her forehead against his.

“Okay,” he said, shuddering a little as unwanted memories swelled and ebbed.

“Kiss me,” Katherine said, banishing his past with the soft touch of her fingers on his cheek.

“Okay,” he said, smiling tenderly and letting his eyes drift close. He felt the press of her lips against his, smelled her sweat and perfume and happiness, watched the afterglow of her bright yellow words fade in his head, and knew that no matter what came next, he’d love her through all of it. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Aww, they're so happy together :3


End file.
